OAKLAND, CA---The Fruitvale Transit Village adjacent to the Fruitvale Bart Station is full of shops and restaurants and was built in part with redevelopment funds. The state's elimination of the Redevelopment Agency will hit urban centers particularly hard in their efforts to turn vacant and underutilized properties into productive, tax revenue-and job-producing use. Redevelopment is one of the few tools that Oakland and other cities have to serve as a catalyst for private investment in their cities.

Photo: Tomas Ovalle, Special To The Chronicle

OAKLAND, CA---The Fruitvale Transit Village adjacent to the...

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OAKLAND, CA---The Fox Theater was renovated in part with Redevelopment funds. The state's elimination of the Redevelopment Agency will hit urban centers particularly hard in their efforts to turn vacant and underutilized properties into productive, tax revenue-and job-producing use. Redevelopment is one of the few tools that Oakland and other cities have to serve as a catalyst for private investment in their cities.

Photo: Tomas Ovalle, Special To The Chronicle

OAKLAND, CA---The Fox Theater was renovated in part with...

Image 3 of 3

OAKLAND, CA---The Fox Theater on Telegraph Avenue was renovated in part with Redevelopment funds. The state's elimination of the Redevelopment Agency will hit urban centers particularly hard in their efforts to turn vacant and underutilized properties into productive, tax revenue-and job-producing use. Redevelopment is one of the few tools that Oakland and other cities have to serve as a catalyst for private investment in their cities.

Mayors from around the East Bay said Wednesday that Gov. Jerry Brown's elimination of redevelopment agencies amounts to theft by the state that strips cities of millions of dollars that would have improved neighborhoods and produced tens of thousands of jobs.

Standing near a 100-unit housing complex in East Oakland that is being built with redevelopment money, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and other East Bay leaders expressed their support for a lawsuit filed Monday by the League of California Cities to challenge the state's new budget, which allows cities to keep their redevelopment agencies only if they give up millions to the state.

"We're tired of being their personal ATM," said San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson, whose city stands to lose $10 million this year if it opts to continue running a redevelopment agency.

"There's hypocrisy galore in Sacramento right now," said Union City Mayor Mark Green, whose city would lose $7 million this year.

"We can't print money like Washington," Quan said. And "we can't take money from other agencies, like the state of California apparently can."

Oakland would lose $40 million if officials decide to continue running a redevelopment agency.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who as Oakland's mayor spearheaded a transformation of the city's downtown by using redevelopment money, advocated the elimination of redevelopment, saying it was the right thing to do in the worst economy since the Great Depression.

His spokesman, Gil Duran, said local officials had misplaced their anger.

"What's outrageous is that at a time when so much is being taken from education, care for the elderly, universities and community colleges, these local politicians can only express grief at the loss of redevelopment," he said. "There are a lot of things that people could put their effort behind. They're choosing redevelopment over everything else that's being cut."

Redevelopment law has allowed cities to keep a certain percentage of increases in property tax to finance projects that remove blight or create jobs. Brown and others have criticized redevelopment as sometimes being wasteful. In Sacramento, redevelopment money was used to finance a bar that features women swimming through water as mermaids, Duran noted. Elsewhere, the money has been used to build golf courses.

"Cutting redevelopment was not a tough choice because it's so wasteful," he said.

Local officials insisted that overall, redevelopment - despite some unusual projects - leads to a healthier local economy.

In Oakland, the loss of the redevelopment agency would imperil projects that range from the modernization of the Port of Oakland to a West Oakland teen center to a new East Oakland grocery store. The city pays 17 police officers with redevelopment funds.

In Concord, officials are counting on redevelopment money to transform the former Concord Naval Weapons Station into housing, commercial space and a conference center. Vice Mayor Ron Leone said 12,000 construction jobs and 27,000 permanent jobs would be created there, but not without redevelopment.

In Union City, redevelopment money is being sought to create an interconnecting hub for BART, AC Transit and passenger rail. Office complexes and housing are all included in the site.

But no city may have benefited more from redevelopment than Emeryville.

Once a haven for heavy industry, the city has become a shopping mecca catering to a wide range of needs. It was all made possible by redevelopment, a blight designation that covers 98 percent of the city.

"This city would still be decaying, industrial junk," said Emeryville Mayor Nora Davis.

Davis said redevelopment law allowed, among other things, for the city to go after industrial polluters whose properties remained toxic long after the companies had left. Both the Ikea store and Bay Street couldn't have been built without such cleanup efforts, Davis said.

Many mayors contended state officials had turned their back on the very tool that brought them up the political hierarchy, from assemblymen to the governor himself.

"We have been betrayed by our elected officials in Sacramento," said Wilson, the San Ramon mayor. "They have sold the people of this state down the river."

Duran, Brown's spokesman, saw it differently.

"It was a very different time," said Duran, who was also Brown's spokesman while he was mayor of Oakland. "The money simply isn't there. The sooner these local officials accept that, the better."